Icecast - Apr 2005 - Help with Icecast / streaming to Windows Media player

Hi - 

I'm a "streaming" newbie.  I've recently configured Icecast
(v2.2) with Ices
(v0.4) to stream a playlist of MP3 files.

When a user with iTunes as their default media player connects to this
stream (http://www.barsuk.com:8000/barsukradio.m3u), it works just fine.

However, if a user has Windows Media player as their default media player,
WM seems to get stuck "connecting...".   Occasionally, after 10 or 15
minutes, the stream starts up, but usually it just fails.  The icecast error
log gives no indication that an error is occurring.

I have a lot of questions (and haven't located the answers yet on the
"internets"), but here are the most important:

1. Has anyone else had this problem with Windows Media player?  How do you
fix it?

2. Are there better options for streaming a list of files than my current
configuration?

3. How do I go about creating a link if I want to stream just 1 file, and
have it played just once?

4. Eventually I want to create a nice-looking "radio"-like interface
... any
suggestions for where to start?

Thanks to anyone who can answer any of these questions.  Cheers -

Christopher
Barsuk Records
christopher@barsuk.com

Hi Chris,

I'll try and answer some of the easier questions:
> 2. Are there better options for streaming a list of files than my current
> configuration?
Probably not! Ices0.4 rocks because of its simplicity and stability.

> 3. How do I go about creating a link if I want to stream just 1 file, and
> have it played just once?
The easiest way to do it is to host the MP3 file just like any static
file, and then create an M3U file that references that one single
file. Most media players handle this nicely and treat it as a stream.

> 4. Eventually I want to create a nice-looking "radio"-like
interface ... any
> suggestions for where to start?
Personally I'd start by looking at how to embed Quicktime objects into
a webpage - that's what we did for our station. The following link
shows an embedded player which start automatically:
http://www.mcld.co.uk/flatfour/?play=true

To read more about customising the way Quicktime player objects
appear, look here:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/authoring/qtwebfaq.html

To customise the look drastically, you might like to make the actual
quicktime object invisible and then use image-based javascript buttons
to trigger on/off/pause/etc.

You could also try building something in Flash, but last time I
checked Flash couldn't handle streamed MP3.

Best,
Dan

-- 
http://www.mcld.co.uk

On Apr 2, 2005 3:01 PM, Dan Stowell <danstowell@gmail.com>
wrote:
> 
> You could also try building something in Flash, but last time I
> checked Flash couldn't handle streamed MP3.
Icecast has a hack for this problem in the flash player, which means
flash can play some icecast mp3 streams, but only for a limited
duration before it disconnects (based on the number of bytes, so how
long it works for depends on bitrate).

Mike